Benghazi Talking Points Emails: "No New Info"?

The Senate Intelligence Committee today received the classified documents they requested from the Obama Administration that concerned communications in the executive branch in the hours after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of four Americans. Fox News Capitol Hill reporter Chad Pergram has a source that claims the e-mails revealed by the White House did not "shed any new light", which might have been disappointing to Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee:

Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee today received a classified briefing by an administration official on the various emails and documents assembled in the days after the September 11th attack in Benghazi. These emails were the precursor of the “talking points” which the administration then armed UN Ambassador Susan Rice and other officials with.

One source familiar with the briefing indicated that they did not believe the emails shed any new light on anything that was not already known and said the messages did not demonstrate an effort by the administration to deliberately downplay the role of “al Qai’da” or “terrorists.”

Republicans have charged the Obama Administration with deliberately misleading the public with regard to the attack in Benghazi when U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice was interviewed the Sunday after the attack and claimed the Benghazi attack was the result of protests that rose up, inspired by an inflammatory anti-Islam YouTube video.

The Obama administration has declined to directly answer who made the edits. And the nation's top intelligence officials appear either confused or not forthcoming about the journey their own intelligence took.

On Fri. Nov. 16, Petraeus told members of Congress that it wasn't the CIA that changed the talking points.

The White House and the State Department said it wasn't them.

The CIA then told CBS News that the edits were made at a "senior level in the interagency process." Intelligence officials said the references were dropped so as not to tip off al Qaeda as to what the U.S. knew, and to protect sources and methods.

Soon thereafter, another reason was given. A source from the Office of the Director for National Intelligence (ODNI) told CBS News' Margaret Brennan that ODNI made the edits as part of the interagency process because the links to al Qaeda were deemed too "tenuous" to make public.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said Thursday that the White House's response to his and other Republican senators' questions on the September attack in Benghazi, Libya was satisfactory... "I think it was an adequate response, yes," McCain said. "We are working on and having negotiations now trying to smooth this thing out and get it done."

As the Senate moves forward with confirmation votes on some of the Obama Administration's nominees for security posts - John Brennan's confirmation vote will occur Thursday - it remains to be seen if Republicans continue to press forward for more information from the Obama Administration regarding the terrorist attack that resulted in the deaths of four Americans.